Prediction
Chapter 1- WalMart is the largest private employer in the U.S. WalMart is very successful because they know people would rather go to a gross store qith lower prices than a nice store with higher prices. So WalMart is willing to trade quality for price. By doing this they cut marketing budgets. WalMart has 10-15 new stores every year! In 1988 WalMart came the number one toyseller store and beat Toys R Us. That's when Toys R Us came up with Babies R Us so they wouldn't go out of business. WalMarts largest retail competator is Home Depot but WalMart is four times bigger. Another big competator was K-Mart. In 1988 there was a movie with Tom Cruise where he said on screen K-Mart sucks. People must have listened and went to WalMart instead because WalMart was very successful.
Chapter 2- This chapter was all about Sam Walton, the creator of WalMart. He started off selling satin elastic waist panties for 2 dollars a dozen and he probably became one of the richest men in the U.S. After highschool Sam had many jobs to pay off his room and board at the University of Missouri. He then wanted to go off to business school but couldn't afford it. Think about it. If he could afford it he could have ended up as an insurance broker or something. Soon after college he met his wife Helen. He was still selling panties and opened a store called five and dime. After 5 years it was one of the most profitable store in a 6 state region. His wife, Helen, didn't want to live in big states which was good so when Sam started WalMart it kept him from big competatrs. On July 2, 1962 Walton opened his first WalMart in Rogers, Arkansas. The store had no air conditioning and the supplies were on fold out tables. WalMart grew much bigger beause of the low prices. In April 1992 George W Bush awarded Sam with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The 3 weeks later he died from bone cancer. The store grew 5 times bigger after he had died.
Chapter 3- WalMart stayed in small towns. It was the worlds largest corparation. WalMart went from 276 stores to 1,528 store in 10 years. By the time it was 2004 there were 3,551 stores in the U.S. It took 12 years for WalMart to claim worlds largest grocery store. A traditional WalMart was 90,000 square feet and every store used a satellite system to control the tempature and the lights. WalMart says that it has the lowest prices on everything but that's not true. Not everything is at the lowest price it could be at. People believe everything is at the lowest price so the just stop comparing. WalMart sells many things. They sell 2,100 dollars in cake each week. Also WalMart sells a gimmick for hunters. WalMart took Spam and made it Spamouflage. That's spam with camoiflaged cans. WalMart is such a big store and between 1993 and 2003 20 chains filed bankruptcy and put the reason was because of WalMart!
Chapter 4- This chapter was all about the WalMart workers. An average full time store emplyee makes $7.50 an hour. Part time would be about 28 to 34 hours. Former employees say managers were instructed to keep labor cost at 8 percent of sales. In 2004 The government found out that between 1994 and 1999 WalMart forced 83 workers to work unpaid overtime. Also 10 percent of all WalMarts lock their doors on overnight crews! In 2003 CEO Lee Scott made $4.3 million in salary then $13.1 million in bonuses. Talk about special treatment! Employees now have swipe carda to swipe in with a magnetic stripe ID badges that identifys people and also tracks hours and wages. Employees don't get any advantages from WalMart either. WalMart doesn't pay for contraceptives, childhood vaccinations, dental checkups, or flu shots when other companies do.
Chapter 5- WalMart burns through half of all new hires each year. Shows how good that job is. On worker who was higher up gave himself $100,000 raise so he could get half a million on one year. In 2004 WalMart had one of the largest lawsuits about female employees. They were paid 6.2 percent less then male employees and women only filled one third of managerial positions. WalMArt stores moved to Canada in 1994 with 122 stores. In 2002 WalMart planned to open 40 stores in Californiia over the next three years. They put stores everywhere. No wonder there are so many stores.
Chapter 6- Pillowtex was a company that supplied WalMart with towels. Pillowtex went out of business. WalMart said it had nothing to do with the closing of pillowtex but then again they said they had nothing to do with not following labor laws then they lock illegal immigrants in their store! I'm not sure if they did have anything to do with it but I know many other business's went out of business because of WalMart. WalMart Also gets most of their items from China. In 2004 WalMart imported 15 billion dollars worth of Chinese goods. Thanks to WalMart China was turning into the fastest growing economy.
Chapter 7- WalMart is definetly a very big store. It has two hundred and eighty-eight dollars in sales each year. That gives Walmart ten billion dollars in Profit! Everybody knows WalMart has many larbor law problems. WalMart just responds to those problems by treating the charges as a public relations matter and not a substance issue of workplace fairness. I think they should just take the issue head on.
Chapter 8- WalMart carries many things especially books,magazines, and albums. They carrie more then five hundred different titles of books. They also carry many albums unless they think it is innapropriate or it has a parental advisory sticker on it. One day a man was in line at the check out station and picked up a magazine, don't we all. The magazine was Cosmo and the man was very upset about the headline. It was how to give a geat blow job. The man was so upset he went to the manager and complained. They told him to write down his complaints and that's what he did. It wasn't that easy for WalMart to decide whether to get rid of the magazine or keep it but in the end they got rid of both Cosmo and Maxim.
Chapter 9- Sam Walton once said that he would never force his store, WalMart, into a community that didn't want it around. Believe it or not everybody says WalMart is not a city person store it is more for just country people. That's where Sam Walton put his stores. Since the mid eighties some communities really didn't want WalMart so they organized to keep the store out. Some people were mad about all the labor laws the store broke and other people simply just didn't want so much traffic.
Chapter 10- In 2003 WalMart announced they wanted a new store in Inglewood. The city didn't want a WalMart so they denied them the rights for building one there. WalMart representatives began collecting signatures for a ballot to let them have a WalMart there. WalMart representatives just ran up to everyday people to get them to vote yes for a store in Inglewood. In the end they were denied once again to build a store with the vote sixty percent no and forty percent yes.
Chapter 11- After trying to open a store in Inglewood and failing they moved to a new place. In 2004 they announced that they plan to open a store in Rego Park, New York and employing 300 people. The mayor supported WalMart and wanted one in Rego Park. A New York representative told the Tribune that WalMart was wrong for New York and they should not build one. It ended up that nobody wanted WalMart around and they were not allowed to build a store in Rego Park, New York.